


Mama Who Bore Me

by mamalovesherbagels



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst, i mean i'm not sorry but, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24354721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamalovesherbagels/pseuds/mamalovesherbagels
Summary: Facing down parenthood himself for the very first time, Chimney finds himself grieving his mother all over again.
Relationships: Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Mama Who Bore Me

It feels juvenile, he thinks, to be looking at the two positive pregnancy tests his now napping girlfriend had left on the kitchen table and be thinking that he wants his mom.

(How old would she have been now? She was around the age he is now when she died, and wow, her son was almost fifteen at the age he is now just having his first kid. He thinks a lot about how he got so, so lucky compared to her. So many of the avenues that had been open for him from the second that he was born that had always been closed off for her.)

It’s not that he’s terrified and wants her to tell him that everything is going to be okay- well, there’s a little bit of that, he just found out he’s going to be a father for the first time- it’s mostly that she *should* be here. She’s going to get to be a grandmother, or rather, she would’ve gotten to be one had cancer not taken her far too soon.

He should get to share this with her. It’s not fair.

It’s never been fair and it never will be.

Life isn’t fair, haven’t you accepted that long ago, he asks himself?

.

He remembers when he could hardly stand to look at Mrs. Lee. She had taken him in, saving him from having to return to a now foreign country with an emotionally foreign father after suffering the most devastating loss imaginable, but he couldn’t look her in the eye.

He couldn’t bring himself to start to accept anything remotely adjacent to a motherly presence in his life.

He had a mom. One mom. And he had lost her.

Nothing could ever fill that place.

.

As the years go by, he slowly learns to accept what he calls the “bonus mom” he’s been given.

Nothing could ever ease the ache left in his heart ever since his mother took her last breath, but he can’t help but grow to cherish the way Mrs. Lee hugs him with the same reverence she does Kevin, cuts their sandwiches the same way, stays up with him the same way she would her biological son when she knows he’s too anxious to sleep.

She helps keep his mother alive, too, which is yet another gift she’s given him that he could never repay her for. He knows Mr. Lee loves his mom, too, but he’s more stoic about his feelings, less likely to bring his friend he misses up in conversation for fear of getting emotional or upsetting her son.

But Mrs. Lee knows he needs to hear it, knows he needs to hear all about the lovely person his mother was over and over again, and to hear the stories of moments between two adult friends he had never gotten to bear witness to.

So it’s her he finds himself on the phone with, despite him and Maddie deciding not to tell anyone about the pregnancy until she hits the four months along mark.

“My mom would’ve loved being a grandmother, right?” he asks in a small, tentative voice that reminds Mrs. Lee of when he first moved in with them all those many years ago.

“Oh, Howard,” she sighs, the most all encompassing bittersweetness running through her, immediately putting together the implication, “nothing could have ever brought her more joy. How’s Maddie feeling?”

.

When his mother first got sick, she would tell him again and again that everything would be fine. He was twelve, and she was his mother, so he didn’t question it.

It wasn’t until he got older that he started to have regrets. She was the sick one, she must have been so terrified, so much more terrified than he was, why wasn’t he the one comforting her?

He did his best to be strong for her, of course, but he doesn’t know if he can ever forgive himself for all those nights his mom found him crying in the bathroom.

.

“The baby’s a girl,” he tells Mrs. Lee, clasping her hand from across the table in front of them, “Maddie and I are having a little girl.”

As her eyes well up with tears, it’s not lost on him that their connection is just as important to her as it is to him. She is not only the sole way for his daughter to have a grandmother on his side of the family; he is the sole way for her to have a grandchild.

“A girl? Oh, Howard,” she gasps, clutching her chest as if the joy will physically overflow from her if she does not try and hold it in, “a baby girl. I couldn’t be happier for you.”

“I hope she looks like Maddie… and my mom,” he sighs.

“I hope she looks like all three of you. And I hope she has your mother’s heart, which I’m sure she will, because she’ll surely inherit that from you.”

It’s not the first time Mrs. Lee has compared him to his mom, but it never fails to stop him in his tracks.

He remembers his mom as this angel, the one person he could count on to give him the parental love he so desired and needed, the one people who would stick up to his father for him, even if she would never stick up to him for herself.

Except for when she didn’t follow him back to Korea.

He doesn’t want to think of her as some martyr, because he knows a lot of her decisions were forced, but he knows she loved him more than anything.

And he knows that she was BRAVE. Because the one time she did find the courage to put her foot down with her husband, it was the time that mattered the most.

There would be no Maddie, no baby, no life with the 118 if his mom hadn’t refused to pack up and leave the country she had learned to love behind.

It’s what makes going into burning, potentially collapsing buildings so easy for him. The bravery, the strength, the faith that requires is nothing compared to what his mother had to garner the one time she told his father “no.”

.

It’s hard for him to understand why Maddie doesn’t want to tell her mother she’s pregnant, it really is. He knows, he knows logically why it’s hard for her to want to share this with her mom, but he can’t help but feel bewildered, frustrated, and just so, so jealous of her.

She has a mom, a living mom, and there’s not much he wouldn’t do to be able to share this blessing with his mom, alive.

He knows Maddie’s not dumb, that she feels the judgement radiating from him, as much as he hates himself for feeling him, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. Probably doesn’t even know how to even begin to approach it, he thinks, because really, neither does he.

He feels like a jackass when she finally calls her mother, at least partly to appease him, and she ends up with tears.

He knew it would turn out like that, and still, he was angry that she wouldn’t call her sooner.

He hates it.

.

Tension cannot be ignored forever.

Maddie ends up storming out of their apartment crying when he finally says it, when he finally can’t help but say it.

“You should give her a chance. At least you HAVE a mom! And you’re the one who insisted I give Albert a try just because he’s my brother!”

He’s not even surprised when he gets the “I’m staying at Buck’s tonight” text, it just makes him wish maybe Doug had stabbed him a few more times, made it even more painful for him.

Sighing, an unopened package on the table catches his eye. It’s addressed to him, and he’s momentarily confused that Maddie didn’t mention that something had come for him, but then he remembers he was too busy being hugely unfair to her.

There’s a note inside that simply says:

“Howard, your mother gave this to me before she passed. She told me to give it to you when you needed it again. She always knew you would.”

There’s a silence, and then the floodgates open, all over again, as if he was hearing the sound of his mother flatlining on the heart monitor in that god damned hospital all over again.

“Forgot my keys,” a disgruntled voice mumbles, before hearing the sobbing and stopping in her tracks.

She takes one look at her boyfriend, and then one look at the baby blanket in his hands.

Her anger dissipates instantly.

She gets it.

She gets it.

“Oh, Howie,” she cries, finding her feet carrying her over to him before she can even think to move them.

“I m-miss my mom” he sobs, not even caring that he sounds like a ten year old, “M-Maddie I miss m-my mama.”


End file.
